At that time we talked to Raju Vegesna and Sridhar Vembu of the Zoho team to discuss what they had released, and the architecture behind it. Zoho has taken a very pragmatic approach, in that they add a small piece, release it, and then continue to add more. This meant that the first offline release allowed you to read your documents, but not edit them.

This brings you to today, where Zoho has announced a new version of Zoho Writer which does give you the ability to edit files on a plane.

If you know that you are leaving the land of the 'net, go ahead and click on the Go Offline button, and your most recent documents will be loaded into a local database in the browser. You can then edit those files at will, and when you find a connection again you can sync up. Zoho has a merge system in the backend which detects changes made, perhaps by multiple people on the same file, and allows you to get all of the changes in.

We sat down with Raju and Sridhar again and discussed the merging and sync system, as well as the other architecture decisions that the team made with this latest release. We chat about what you can expect now, and also the next steps for offline in Writer and their other products.

Thanks once again to the Zoho team. It is great to see you moving through your applications, taking them offline with Gears!